Monday, December 10, 2018

Which major Landscape Design rule do you see, below?
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Which subsidiary Landscape Design rules do you see, below?
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If you had this single garden pic, below, to teach a Garden Design course, what does your hand-out look like? What are its headings?

Pic, above, here.
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Great wisdom, above.
.Choose a pot so wonderful, it never needs planting.
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What else about this pot, above, must be copied in your garden? For every pot, focal point, and piece of garden furniture you consider, ask yourself, "Is this piece so wonderful it will be fought over at my estate sale?"
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Another bit of wisdom from, above?
.A garden designed to look beautiful in winter, will be beautiful all year.
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Best Garden Design book ever written, is titled, The Garden In Winter, by Rosemary Verey.
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How best to site groupings of plantings? Contrast foliage textures, colors, sizes, contrast shapes of plant silhouettes, mix evergreen plantings with deciduous, create architecture of a room/s with ceiling (sky)-walls-floors, include art/function/change thru the seasons, site focal points on axis from main views of the house, plantings must include scent/blooms/fall color/berries, plantings must be deer resistant/drought tolerant/bug-fungus proof and cycle with interest throughout the year.
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This is fun, from a single garden pic we've already started a nice Garden Design course.
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Urn, above, is a delight, in memory at my own stupidity, ahead of epiphany. How do you think I was able to have an empty pot epiphany? Seriously, anyone out there had the Empty Pot Epiphany too? Found a quote this year my mom wrote down, "Genius may have its limitations but stupidity is not handicapped."
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Yes, these bits of Garden Design are this important, for me to repeat, repeat, repeat..... If you don't have The Garden In Winter, plenty of used at good prices with the link.
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Copied a simple historic garden room, in our ca. 1900 home this year, a life moment arrived recently, and beyond measure that garden room, and Nature, tended, in great love, not only a life moment, but the entirety of my life. Why do you want to Garden Design? I know why I do, it's for those moments, knowing another may never come. And that is fine, what has been received already is beyond measure.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Age 8, saw my 1st garden like this, below, in Augusta, GA. The adults were content to stay inside & chat. I did the rude child thing, and begged to go outside. They were glad to get rid of me. Had to be, I was more than glad to be gone from them. Not until I saw the movie, Beetlejuice, did anything describe how I felt, going outside that house, that day, into the garden. Another world.
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The garden was entirely green, wild, mischievously wild. Looking ahead, left, right, the garden was telling me to go everywhere, all a fabulous mystery, yet speaking to me in a language I knew. And, that feeling of being alone, in this adventure, perhaps explains more fully, in adulthood, studying historic landscapes across Europe for decades. And creating the garden for myself.
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Few ask for. or understand, this type garden, up front, in USA. I design as much of them into the ubiquitous requests, as I can. A tiny handful, across 3 decades, have asked for the full monty.
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I was caught by this garden, below, being presumptuous. It's owner, in the public eye for decades with an international successful career, and public persona so Cruella Deville, Meryl Streep played her in a movie. The garden, below, takes her mask off. Anna Wintour's garden, below.

Will never forget the years of lunches in my previous garden, during summer, and hearing the hummingbirds zoom over my head. Do you really think I knew to design my garden for that to happen? My best Garden Design learning was finally understanding classical Garden Design rules, FINALLY copying them. Once accomplished, Nature arrived. Nature more like Tinker Bell than can be explained, excepting through letting Nature reign.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Years ago, before the advent of cell phones, driving, I passed a huge white wisteria, in full dripping bloom, engulfing a mature loblolly pine. I made a mental note to get my camera, and drive by again. Somewhere in the bowels of my slide boxes, is that picture.
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Someone else thought the combo, white wisteria/loblolly pine, was threatening. Within the week, both cut to the ground, gone, poof. As if they had never been.
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Finding this, below, on Pinterest, recently, I'm able to relive those moments, a-thing-of-beauty-is-a-joy-forever.
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More particularly, the few days/moments of bloom, are Temporary Focal Points. In designed gardens, there is great humor, to me, in the Temporary Focal Point. Without effort Nature reigns, like electricity, all we can do is harness the magic.

Garden & Be Well, XO T
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Within a week of photographing the white wisteria, and about a mile away, I discovered dogwood tree in full creamy white blossom, dripping with long light purple blossoms of a wisteria. Got pic of it too. About 2 years later, dogwood/wisteria were cut to the ground.
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John Keats, 1795-1821, below, from here.

A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:Its loveliness increases; it will neverPass into nothingness; but still will keepA bower quiet for us, and a sleepFull of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathingA flowery band to bind us to the earth,Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearthOf noble natures, of the gloomy days,Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened waysMade for our searching: yes, in spite of all,Some shape of beauty moves away the pallFrom our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boonFor simple sheep; and such are daffodilsWith the green world they live in; and clear rillsThat for themselves a cooling covert make'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:And such too is the grandeur of the doomsWe have imagined for the mighty dead;All lovely tales that we have heard or read:An endless fountain of immortal drink,Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essencesFor one short hour; no, even as the treesThat whisper round a temple become soonDear as the temple's self, so does the moon,The passion poesy, glories infinite,Haunt us till they become a cheering lightUnto our souls, and bound to us so fastThat, whether there be shine or gloom o'ercast,They always must be with us, or we die.

Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that IWill trace the story of Endymion.The very music of the name has goneInto my being, and each pleasant sceneIs growing fresh before me as the greenOf our own valleys: so I will beginNow while I cannot hear the city's din;Now while the early budders are just new,And run in mazes of the youngest hueAbout old forests; while the willow trailsIts delicate amber; and the dairy pailsBring home increase of milk. And, as the yearGrows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steerMy little boat, for many quiet hours,With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.Many and many a verse I hope to write,Before the daisies, vermeil rimmed and white,Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the beesHum about globes of clover and sweet peas,I must be near the middle of my story.O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,With universal tinge of sober gold,Be all about me when I make an end!And now at once, adventuresome, I sendMy herald thought into a wilderness:There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dressMy uncertain path with green, that I may speedEasily onward, thorough flowers and weed.